Screw the tiger for your copy righter

Screw the tiger for your copy righter

Fear gets a bit of a bad rap. It kept us alive when we were being hunted by sabre-toothed tigers, after all.

And it stopped us from eating suspicious-looking berries. And it stops us from placing our life savings on our cousin’s own crypto currency that they promised would triple our money in two days.

Fear keeps us on the safe path. No-one ever got fired for buying IBM, right?

But how many got promoted?

It’s a common ailment in business: steady the ship, minimise the loss. But staying in the cave doesn’t just keep you from the sabre-toothed tiger’s belly; it keeps your belly empty too.

The vagaries of this world are always ready to find a tree overhanging your safe path and to put a tiger in it, ready to pounce.

Fear can kill you as readily as save you

Fear keeps you on the safe path, but that path is never as safe as it seems. The property market was seen as a solid investment until 2008 slapped us across the chops. Apple stock actually went down after Steve Jobs came back to “save” Apple.

The vagaries of this world are always ready to find a tree overhanging your safe path and to put a tiger in it, ready to pounce.

And while that path preserves what you have, it causes you to stagnate. You look back and see your progress through the jungle as success. You pick out the steps that worked, explain the stumbles, and see your past as the rational approach to getting as far as you have.

You might call this rational analysis, even scientific: “doing this has worked, so I shall do more of it.” But a scientific approach involves hundreds of experiments that test a single variable. There is no such rigour in our lives. We fail to account for variables such as luck, timing, other people, and other events and factors unknown to us.

“I make my own luck.” A more nonsensical statement was never uttered.

And fear makes this folly worse. It causes you to double down on what worked before. To repeat the past and expect the same results. You don’t wander off the path and exercise the muscles you need to escape the tiger. So when the unexpected happens – recession, disruptive technology, staffing changes – you’re too stagnant to adapt.

The dividends of mistakes

Steve Jobs is lauded for the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad.

But no-one celebrates NeXT.

NeXT is the company he formed after being ousted from Apple. NeXT produced an eye-wateringly expensive computer at $6,500 that was targeted at higher education. When it launched, Jobs had prepared for sales of ten thousand a month. Sales were, instead, four hundred a month.

From a blinkered position, Jobs had failed. He had attempted something audacious, made mistakes, and his work (and a lot of money) had gone down the toilet.

But when Jobs rejoined Apple years later, he brought with him the software platform his team had built for the NeXT computer and told Apple techs to build a new operating system off the back of it. That operating system became MacOS X, a stable, capable operating system that became a huge factor in Apple’s resurgence.

Job’s wandered off the path and made a huge mistake. But without that mistake, he wouldn’t have been able to adapt when he returned to Apple. His remarkable success could not have happened.

A fearful businessman wouldn’t have taken the ludicrous risks that Jobs took. They would be conservative, licence software from someone else, and minimise the potential loss. They’d have stayed on the path.

And they would never enjoyed Steve Job’s remarkable success.

Your copy righter isn’t something to be afraid of

Here’s how fear of your copy righter goes. I’m laying it out so we can break it up and analyse the bits. After all, a sabre-toothed tiger isn’t so scary on the dissection table, right?

“It’s not appropriate for our business. We work with conservative customers. Besides, even if they liked it, I’ll never get it signed off. Better to stick with what I’m doing.”

A business is just a group of people.

Okay. Let’s break this down.

“It’s not appropriate for our business”

Good copy isn’t appropriate?

That’s a little snarky, sorry. But it has a kernel of truth. When I share examples of copy righter, some business owners shy away. They think maybe it’s all silly jokes or emotive, punchy, too strong or bold.

But it’s your copy righter. That means it’s whatever is right for your business. Sometimes that’s humour; it’s a great way of engaging people. But there are plenty of other tools for writing your copy righter. If you don’t want to be funny, be authoritative. Be clever. Be informative.

Whatever you do, do it righter.

“We work with conservative customers.”

You’re falling into the trap of confusing the people with the business.

A business is just a group of people. It doesn’t have feelings or opinions. But the people running it often take conservative business decisions.

But they’re still people. They like to smile. Laugh, even. And they have their own fears to contend with. Speak to them and their emotions. And when it’s time to make a business decision, they’ll remember who spoke to their feelings. They’ll struggle to remember who spoke like a robot or (worse) who was just too dull they forgot them entirely.

“Besides, even if they liked it, I’ll never get it signed off.”

We’ve all worked at places where getting sign-off on anything slightly different is harder than doing a prostate exam on a hungry lion.

But sometimes you just need to grit your teeth, don your steel helmet and slip on that elbow-length rubber glove.

Just like writing copy, the trick to getting sign-off on your copy righter depends on the psychology of your audience; in this case, your management team.

Are they afraid? Are they arrogant? Are they uncertain? Have they given up getting their own sign-off and just dodging their own battle?

Test your assumptions. Do some digging and find out exactly why new things don’t get signed off. And then apply a solution to the problem.

Here’s an example.
Kai-To Li runs the TikTok account for Lotus Cars. Lotus’ other channels were filled with sensuous shots of the cars, slow-motion video, and prestige copy. Kai-To filled its TikTok with unhinged jokes, memes, and bizarre videos.
Why? Because Kai-To knew Lotus had a lot of channels for people who were thinking about buying a car in the near future. But they didn’t have any channels for kids who would go on to buy a Lotus someday.
How? He simply pointed out Lotus’ TikTok was dead. If the content flopped, there was no loss. If it succeeded, it would be a big win.
There was no fear of loss in giving Kai-To the approval to try his strategy. So he got a thumbs-up. And his experiment worked to the tune of 3 million followers.
Anyway, where were we?

“Better to stick with what I’m doing.”

This is perhaps fear’s most seductive whisper. It gives you permission to do nothing. You don’t need to try. Trying is scary and it’s hard. Trying means an opportunity to fail. Playing it safe, like choosing IBM, means we’re more likely to keep our jobs.

But we’re also not going to get that promotion.

Because there’s an invisible danger: the sleepy prospect. You don’t see them putting down your white paper. You don’t see your emails slowly drifting into the junk folder, still subscribed but never seen let alone opened.

Your copy is boring your prospects. Fine, you might think, because our competitors are boring too.

But that means you’re just one small step away from losing: all it takes is for one competitor to get brave. And it doesn’t take much time or investment to start writing your copy righter. It just takes a bit of bravery. You can be outpaced before you realise what’s happening.

Your Copy Righter is an easy way to stand out.

How long until your competitors realise that?

Now you’re afraid again. It’s the good fear again. And now you’re afraid of the right thing.

The right kind of fear

In 2014, Jim Carrey delivered a commencement address at Maharishi International University. He told the story of his father, who he said would have been a great comedian. But Jim’s father chose instead a job as an accountant. It was a sensible choice. It was a practical choice. It was a safe choice.

And, when Jim was 12 years old, his father was let go from his safe job.

“You can fail at what you don’t want,” Carrey told the audience. “So you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”

I can’t believe you enjoy writing dull, corporate copy. And if it will fail anyway, you might as well take a chance on trying something bolder.

Whatever you do, do it righter.

Time to leave the cave

If you’ve been paying attention, the sabre-toothed tiger is failure with big teeth.

If you’re too scared, you sit in the cave. You think you’re safe by not trying. By not changing. But you starve.

The tiger got you anyway.

Leaving the cave feels risky. What if you don’t make it? What if the tiger catches you anyway?

But you know not to be afraid of the tiger. Because you know the secret now.

You’ll run. And every time you glance over your shoulder, you’ll see your competitors falling to stagnation, unable to adapt, unable to avoid the tiger in the trees. And while the tiger chows down on the competition, you’ll keep running.

Because, as the old joke goes, you don’t need to outrun the tiger. You just need to outrun everyone else.

So let’s strap on your running shoes and get your copy righter.

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